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Guided tour of the Ethnographic Collection

On 12.05.2023, 16:00-17:00, Holger Jebens will give a guided tour through the Ethnographic Collection of the Frobenius Institute. The focus will be on dance masks from Papua New Guinea. Registration at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

On the Hoskins Peninsula, which belongs to Papua New Guinea, dance masks were traditionally used in performances at the beginning of the rainy season. They represented spiritual beings and were supposed to keep away diseases. The Ethnographic Collection contains 36 of the colorful masks, which the current head of the collection, Prof. Dr. Holger Jebens, was able to acquire during a research trip in the mid-1990s. They were partly made during his presence. The guided tour presents the masks and the religious ideas associated with them and reports on how mask production, performance practice and the presence of the ethnologist mutually influenced each other.

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